In the NewsAxiosApril 17, 2019

Wall Street reckons with climate risk

Two years of wildfires, storms and floods, killing scores of people, destroying thousands of homes and costing some $500 billion in global damage, have convinced big investors of the vulnerability of their assets — and a vast profit opportunity in the decades ahead. Some of the biggest names on Wall Street are partnering with climate science groups to produce the first countrywide, property-level maps attempting to financially navigate the age of extreme weather-driven calamity. Their effort is made possible by the advent of big data and more powerful computers, said Trevor Houser, a partner with Rhodium and co-director of the Lab. Rhodium's work with BlackRock produced 160 terabytes of data, the group said — more than 10 times the holdings of the Library of Congress. At the moment — decades before the worst impacts of extreme weather — much of the groups' material focuses on identifying the risks to current investments.